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Topic: Heart worry, please help! (Read 232 times)

I'm really scared. I'm 19 and a few months ago I started suffering really bad anxiety. I had palpitations/shooting pains, and I never felt like I could breathe correctly. My doctor ordered me a treadmill stress test, a 24 hr holter monitor and an EKG, all which came back normal. She also put me on 25 mg of zoloft. The zoloft made me feel GREAT and I haven't had any sort of anxiety in a month or two. Now I'm having chest pains again and I'm really nervous I'm going to have a heart attack or die or something. Any advice?

If your tests came back normal, your not going to die. There is nothing wrong with your heart. Your anxiety is causing this and you probably need a change in your medication dosage since some of these meds do stop working well after a while.

Could something have happened within the past two months?? What if it didn't pick anything up. I'm too scared to sleep even because I'm afraid I'll pass in my sleep. It's shooting pains on my left side chest

Your only 19, way too young to have any kind of heart problems. The fact that your heart tests were fine should give you the peace of mind that its only anxiety. There is no way the tests wouldn't pick up any issue with your heart and nothing could of happened in those two months that would suddenly cause a healthy heart to not function properly. The next time it happens just know that its anxiety. Do some deep breathing, focus on something else, and if you ignore it it WILL go away. I'd suggest trying that first for a while and if it doesn't help you then talk to your doctor about increasing your medication dosage.

I'm with JunoX as psychotropic meds may need an adjustment. Work with the doc about it. Hang in there, anxiety can really be disturbing, but you can calm down again. Keep plugging away at managing it. Take care.